Create Recurring Notifications for Patients and Families

Run notify

Run the Patient Notification Center from the Practice Management windows

Review Your Notifications

The first screen of notify displays all of your current, active notifications.

You can see each notification’s name, a summary of the notification type, when the contact will go out next, whether the notification is recurring or one-time, and when the notification will expire.

Old Notifications?: Press F4 – Make Inactive to expire a notification and turn it off. You can also press F6 – View Inactive to jump to a list of inactive, or past notifications. You could then edit an inactive notification, change details using the tools described below, and make it active again.

Press [F1 – Add Notification]

Press F1 to create a new notification.

If you wish to edit an existing notification, select it and press F2.

Select an Appointment Reminder Message Type

Enter an asterisk (*) and choose a message type from the pull-down menu.

You can choose to send appointment notifications with or without the physician’s name.

After selecting a message type, you will see a summary of the message’s contents.

Press F1 to continue.

Select How Far in Advance to Notify

How far in advance of a patient’s appointment should the reminder be sent? Enter a number of days.

Press F1 to continue.

Select Visit Reasons

Should all well visit reasons receive this notification? What about sick visits, or rechecks? Select all the visit reasons that should trigger the appointment reminder you are creating.

You can also press F3 – Select All, and then use F2 to deselect visit reasons that should be excluded.

Press F1 to continue.

Specify Physicians

Select all physicians whose scheduled patients should receive reminders.

You can press F3 – Select All, and then use F2 to deselect physicians who’s appointments should be excluded.

Press F1 to continue.

Note: PCC uses the scheduled physician for the appointment. You can also limit by primary care physician later on in the steps below.

Select Scheduling Locations

Select all scheduling locations for appointments that should receive reminders.

Press F1 to continue.

Exclude by Patient Status Flag

Select any patient flags that should block a reminder from being sent to the patient.

Any flags that are already configured to exclude patients from reports will already be selected for you. You can select or deselect any status flag to control who will not receive notification messages. Read Exclude Patients from Recaller and Notify to learn more.

Press F1 to continue.

Optional: Add Additional Criteria

If you would like to limit your reminder list by primary care physician, insurance plan, a billed diagnosis, an account flag, or some other criteria, use the asterisk to select that criteria and then press F1 to define it.

If you do not need additional criteria, press F1 to continue.

Indicate One-Time or Recurring Notification

Select whether this notification is a one-time notification or a recurring notification, and then choose related delivery options.

If you select a One-Time Patient Notification, enter an exact date and a time of day for the notification. Note that TeleVox needs at least a three-hour advance warning and a three-hour window for delivery. Therefore, create your notification early in the day if you wish to send it on the same date.

If you select Recurring Patient Notifications, you can set the notification to be daily, weekly, or yearly, and enter start and end dates for activating the notification.

Appointment Reminders Should Recur, and Recur Daily: Most offices interested in using notifications for appointment reminders will want to create a recurring, daily notification. Then, all patients who meet your criteria and have upcoming appointments will receive a reminder. If an appointment reminder is not recurring or not daily, some patients will not receive reminders.

Recurring Notifications Must Expire: When your practice creates a recurring notification, you must enter an expiration date for that notification. You can set the date to several years or months into the future. You can edit and extend the expiration date at any time. When your recurring notification is about to expire, your PCC system will send an email message to the admin user on your system. On the last day before a notification expires, your system will also open a support sheet with your PCC account team. Contact PCC Support for help configuring your practice’s admin user.

Optional: Specify Delivery Method

Next, you can specify the preferred delivery method for the notification.

Enter up to four possible delivery methods. Your PCC system will send the first valid method it finds to TeleVox.

By default, PCC looks for a patient confidential communication preference. If the patient’s preference is set to “No Preference”, then PCC will use the first available phone number in the Custodian account. This default delivery method behavior can be defined in the Patient Notification Center section of the Configuration Editor (ced).

Review Details

Review the details for your notification.

The details include an estimated number of contacts made. This estimate may or may not be useful when you create recurring notifications, as unusual circumstances or your office’s schedule might make the numbers seem low.

Press F1 to continue, or F8 to step back through notification settings.

Name Your Notification

Give your notification a name.

For ease of use later, you may want to name your notification based on its criteria. For example, your “Well Visit” or “Asthma Recheck” reminder.

Press F1 to save your new notification and return to the main screen.

Optional: Review and Edit Your Notification, or Make it Inactive

From the main screen, select your notification and press F2 – Edit to make changes.

You can also press F4 – Make Inactive to deactivate your reminder, or F5 – Review Details to look at the settings and options for a notification.

Run notify

Run the Patient Notification Center from the Practice Management window.

Review Your Notifications

The first screen of notify displays all of your current, active notifications.

You can see each notification’s name, a summary of the notification type, when the contact will go out next, whether the notification is recurring or one-time, and when the notification will expire.

Old Notifications?: Press F4 – Make Inactive to expire a notification and turn it off. You can also press F6 – View Inactive to jump to a list of inactive, or past notifications. You could then edit an inactive notification, change details using the tools described below, and make it active again.

Press [F1 – Add Notification]

Press F1 to create a new notification.

If you wish to edit an existing notification, select it and press F2.

Select a “Due for a Visit” Message Type

Enter an asterisk (*) and choose a message type from the pull-down menu.

You can choose to deliver “Due for a Visit” notifications with or without the recall reason (well visit, etc.).

After selecting a message type, you will see a summary of the message’s contents.

Press F1 to continue.

Select Location Phone and Recall Reason

Choose an office phone number and a recall reason from the two pull-down menus.

Press F1 to continue.

Scheduling Locations, Recall Reasons: Available location phone numbers are based on your practice’s place-of-service configuration in the Table Editor (ted). The recall reasons are a pre-defined list of available reason types, as designed by PCC and TeleVox to preserve patient confidentiality:

• Well Visit
• Follow Up Visit
• Medication Check
• Vaccination
• Flu Vaccination

Exclude by Patient Status Flag

Select any patient flags that should block this “Due for a Visit” reminder from being sent to the patient.

Any flags that are already configured to exclude patients from reports will already be selected for you. You can select or deselect any status flag to control who will not receive notification messages. Read Exclude Patients from Recaller and Notify to learn more.

Press F1 to continue.

Add Additional Recall Criteria

Enter an asterisk and select additional criteria to shape the perfect patient recall for the recall reason you have selected.

For each criteria you select, the Patient Notification Center will guide you through a series of questions. Make your selection and press F1 to step through each option.

PCC's Recommended Well Child Recall: Your office can work with the available criteria to create and save the perfect recurring “Due for a Well Child” notification. PCC typically recommends the following criteria.

• Include by Date of Physical Due: By including all patients whose next physical is due in the next month, or was due in the past two years, your notification will go out to all patients who need a physical according to your records.

• Include by Date of Last Visit: Including by date of last visit for the past three years is a handy way to leave out patients who have not visited your practice in a long time and should be considered inactive for the purposes of patient recall.

• Exclude by Appointment (All Providers): If a patient has an upcoming appointment with any provider, you don’t want to auto-call them with a reminder to schedule an appointment.

• Exclude by Flag - Account Flag: The Patient Notification Center automatically guides you through excluding by patient flags, but you may have account flags that should also cause the patients to be left off the contact list.

• Your Custom Criteria: In addition to the ideas above, you may choose to limit this specific Due for a Visit notification to certain geographical locations (by zip code), primary care physician, or other criteria.

For help understanding how to enter these criteria, read the Recall Patients for Physicals article.

Indicate One-Time or Recurring Notification

Select whether this notification is a one-time notification or a recurring notification, and then choose related delivery options.

If you select a One-Time Patient Notification, enter an exact date and a time of day for the notification. Note that TeleVox needs at least a three-hour advance warning and a three-hour window for delivery. Therefore, create your notification early in the day if you wish to send it on the same date.

If you select Recurring Patient Notifications, you can set the notification to be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, and then enter start and end dates for activating the notification. In the example above, my practice has decided to send the notification monthly.

Recurring Due for a Visit Reminders vs. One-time: If your office only performs a major “Due for a Visit” recall once or twice a year for physicals, flu shots, or another visit reason, then the “One-time” option may meet your needs.

However, if you set up a monthly recurring reminder, you can be certain that all patients will receive a reminder to call and schedule a physical. If you use PCC’s recommended Well Child recall criteria and a monthly recurring reminder, for example, patients will receive a reminder once a month until they schedule a checkup or request they no longer be contacted. (You can remove patients from the notification contact list using a custom patient or account flag and including that flag in the exclude-by-flag criteria.)

Optional: Specify Delivery Method

Next, you can specify the preferred delivery method for the notification.

Enter up to four possible delivery methods. Your PCC system will send the first valid method it finds to TeleVox.

By default, PCC looks for a patient confidential communication preference. If the patient’s preference is set to “No Preference”, then PCC will use the first available phone number in the Custodian account. This default delivery method behavior can be defined in the Patient Notification Center section of the Configuration Editor (ced).

Review Details

Review the details for your notification.

The details include an estimated number of patient and family contacts. This estimate may or may not be useful when you create recurring notifications, as unusual circumstances or your office’s schedule might make the numbers low.

Press F1 to continue, or F8 to step back through notification settings.

Name Your Notification

Give your notification a name.

For ease of use later, you may want to name your notification based on its criteria. For example, your “Well Child” or “Fall Flu Clinic” recall.

Press F1 to save your new notification and return to the main screen.

Optional: Review and Edit Your Notification, or Make it Inactive

From the main screen, select your notification and press F2 – Edit to make changes.

You can also press F4 – Make Inactive to deactivate your reminder, or F5 – Review Details to look at the settings and options for a notification.